#Metaballs & Raymarching
radiant ivy
naive drum
Oh wow, that takes me back. My very first professional work was writing a Marching Cubes based metaball remember for some commercial software in. Umm. cough 1993...
naive valve
Oh wow, that takes me back. My very first professional work was writing a Marchi...
Wasn't marching cubes still patented at this time? Or did they own it/licensed it?
naive drum
It was, but IIRC the patent was fairly narrow and there were a lot of straightforward variations that would let you get around it. We probably did a version of Marching Tetrahedra by just splitting each cube into six tetrahedra.
(I should say, BTW, that this looks fantastic! Are you using a Gaussian for decay from the center or the cubic polynomial version?)
naive valve
ah yes, yeah i remember tetrahedra was one of the main alternate versions
radiant ivy
I didn't know that the algorithm for marching cubes was patented!
anyway, for the SSS i took a cue from this shadertoy
https://www.shadertoy.com/view/3sXBRr
basically it calculates the specular contribution influenced by the fresnel factor
my use of it is not the same as the shadertoy, I simply use it as a light attenuation factor, which results in that jelly-like effect
naive drum
The patent is long since expired, FWIW.